I took a doll to work, and she brought hers, too

I can't recall bringing a doll to work before.

But there was my daughter Emma's favorite doll, Patty Gigi (the name's a long story), peeking out of the briefcase Emma borrowed from my wife as we prepared to leave home about a week ago on Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.

As I wrote in this space two weeks ago, I was a little nervous about bringing my 7-year-old to the Deseret Morning News office. She wasn't too sure what a business editor does, and I was worried that she would be bored or think my job was silly.

After all, sometimes I do.

But rarely have I seen Emma as excited as she was as we headed downtown. Once we reached my office, she dropped her briefcase, looked out the window at my view of parking garages and the sides of buildings and spent the next half hour giving me a rundown of the activities of the pigeons on nearby rooftops.

She didn't seem interested in my early morning routine — pigeon watching beats selecting business stories off the news wire, I guess. But eventually she calmed down enough to pay attention to a few of the things I was doing. Then I took her on a tour of the building.

Emma found everything fascinating. She loved meeting the different reporters, editors, photographers and artists and quickly distributed the 20 business cards my wife, Stacey, had made for her. (They describe Emma as a "future writer, teacher, artist, president and Mommy," which are her life ambitions, though not necessarily in that order.)

When I told her we had to go to a meeting with other editors at 11:15 a.m., she was thrilled. She stayed in the meeting for about a half-hour, at which point she politely asked, "Daddy, can I go back to your room now?"

Oh, how I wish I had that option!

Lunch was a highlight, as expected. I had arranged for us to meet my wife and other daughters downtown, because I thought Emma might want to call it quits after a half-day. But the first thing she said when she saw Stacey was, "Mom, you and Grace and Kate can stay for lunch, but then you have to leave and I'm staying with Daddy."

Emma then wolfed down her food and said goodbye while the rest of us were still eating.

In the afternoon, I gave Emma a basic rundown of how a newspaper works and had her complete a little pop quiz on the topic. She also worked on a journal about her day for her first-grade teacher, who had given her a special notebook for that purpose.